Jars That Get Separated From Their Lids
by amor-remanet
Summary: In which Barnes and Damien reach an important decision regarding their careers. SLASH, BarnesxDamien.


The first thing Barnes notices tonight is not that Damien comes home late, or that he seems perfectly disinterested in what to get for dinner — while fidgeting around their apartment's tiny excuse for a kitchen, he only mutters the occasional helpful thing, and only after much prodding from Barnes's corner: "Huh? …You want to do what? …Well, that sounds okay, I guess. …Yeah, sure, do whatever, I'll be fine, get me the usual. …Don't they just have our order saved on file there anyway?" They settle on Chinese, eventually, which is only noteworthy because Damien generally prefers to save Chinese for Friday.

But it is not the first thing about Damien that Barnes notices tonight. The first thing that Barnes notices is also not that Damien looks paler than usual, or that he has a pensive, brooding hunch to his shoulders (one that suits Barnes better, he thinks, if only because Sam broods more frequently), or that Damien clearly hasn't slept much since coming back from the convention (which, to be fair, he's known now for a week, if not longer). What Barnes notices first is that, for some reason that he can't fathom, Damien wore his leather jacket to work. Not just any leather jacket, though: he wore the same one that he wears when he LARPs as Dean.

"What?" Damien explains by not explaining anything, shrugging and cocking his head defensively. "A man's got a right to wear his leather jacket where he wants to, babe."

_What a Dean-esque response_, Barnes muses, looking his boyfriend up and down with a pensive sigh, searching for anything else that's out of the ordinary for a Wednesday. Damien has on his same uniform shirt — one of many, the long-sleeved, button-down Oxford with his office's insignia on the chest pocket. And he's wearing the same black trousers that he'd normally wear — but there it is. A thin black cord peeking out from under his collar, and a suspicious lump lower on his chest, in a shape that vaguely resembles the necklace he wears as Dean. "Dames, I'm not saying that you can't wear your leather jacket to work, not that I'd ever say that, I love how that jacket looks on you," he told Damien, trying to keep his voice even. "It's just… different, you know? And I thought Carrie was sort of… more traditionally-minded about that apparel in the office thing."

"Yeah, that bitch can blow me." Damien slumps back, resting on the counter and taking a sip out of his beer. He seems to want to say something — and Barnes considers calling him out on how he is blatantly wearing his Dean jacket, and using his _Dean voice_, and generally _trying to be Dean_ — but instead, they get the call to go down and pick up dinner at the door. Damien makes the trip, and they eat with only the vaguest, most measured tones, talking about how Barnes's day at Radio Shack went. (The answer is: most uneventfully. He only had one remotely interesting incident, and it only came because some kid with chocolate on his hands tried to touch the stereos.)

Damien offers to clean up, and so, after dinner, Barnes stretches out on the sofa that he took when he moved out of his mom and dad's, rotates his shoulders and tries to work some of the kinks out. He closes his eyes, gets comfortable. He nearly drifts off until — "_Motherfucking_, goddamn — Babe! Where is the fucking lid?"

He sighs, and calls out, "Did you check the cabinet by the fridge?" The liberal use of curse words counts as another point for Damien acting too much like Dean for one night. The sound of Damien ferreting around the cupboard echoes through their flat, and Barnes tunes out to it, only coming back around when Damien kicks the sofa. He sits up, briefly, then puts his head in Damien's lap, nuzzles against his boyfriend's thigh, leans his head up toward Damien's warm hand as it runs through his hair.

"Are we gonna talk, Dames?" he prods gently. To the grunted, _About what?_, he replies, "How about the fact that you're playing in some LARP that I just don't get?" Damien furrows his brow and arches an eyebrow. Barnes sighs, and shrugs. "…It's just, you're acting an awful lot like Dean for a Wednesday, you know?"

Damien shakes his head. "It's just… bad day," he explains. "Well. More like bad week. …Month, or something — it was _easier_ before the con, you know? But now it's like… I can't stop thinking about it. The ghost, and how Hell Hound's Lair, like from the _books_? That was a real website, I used to hang out on the forums in college — and there's a _real_ Ghostfacers website. And the explosion in the police station from _Jus In Bello_? I looked that up, babe, _that really happened_ — and there was that _guy_ at the con, the one who called himself _Dean_…"

Barnes blinks up at his boyfriend owlishly, nose wrinkling as he ponders everything Damien has to say. "…I seem to remember promising each other we wouldn't turn into fans like samlicker81," he finally posits.

"We did, but… babe, come on. We saw. A _ghost_. We saw, like, _five_ of them. And we had to salt and burn those mothers, and it was _just like in the books_. …Look me in the eye and tell me that didn't happen just like in the books."

"Okay, it did, but… what are we supposed to _do_ about it?"

Damien sighs. "I don't know, but… I can't _take it_ anymore. I mean… fixing copiers for people who treat me like shit because I have a liberal arts degree and not something like… business or computer science? And just look at the news lately… something is _wrong_ and people are getting _hurt_—"

"You want to be a hunter," Barnes announces, not even questioning Damien's intentions because they're clearly written in his boyfriend's eyes. Sitting up, he shuffles into Damien's lap and straddles him, skinny legs wrapping around his hips. Damien nods underneath the fingers Barnes brushes down his cheek.

"We have the books, babe," Damien points out, interlacing his fingers with Barnes's. "Everything we need to learn's in there. …And if it doesn't work out right, we'll just… quit and go back to our normal nine-to-five, okay? I promise."

Barnes answers him with a tender kiss. "We'll make it work," he whispers.


End file.
